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R N Shapiro

Targeting the Telomeres, A Thriller

Synopsis

Amanda Michaels, a teenager with genetically altered telomeres, was the sole survivor of a jet crash.(Telomeres are the protective tip of the human chromosome controlling cell life-and death). Tragic circumstances befall her family and one of her family members becomes a bargaining chip. When all else fails, she decides vigilante justice is her only option.

Author Biography

R.N. (Rick) Shapiro is an international award winning thriller author, american inventor and practicing trial attorney.
"Taming the Telomeres" captured the top, gold award for thriller in the 2015 Readers' Favorite international book award contest, and has medaled in three other int'l book award contests. The novel has been called "A spellbinding page turner." [Challedon Publishing, locate on Amazon]. TTT has been a #1 best selling suspense action thriller on Amazon, and a top five selling novel in the mystery and suspense Amazon best selling categories.
Rick is currently working on Targeting the Telomeres, a sequel novel.

Author Insight

Prologue

It is two years since the crash. Amanda Michaels was the teenage lone survivor of a jet crash, who overcomes neck fractures, brain injury and amnesia, and then learns that her bio-medical researcher dad had developed secret breakthroughs involving chromosomal telomeres. Telomeres control cell life-and death, and the US and competing intelligence agencies vie for economic access to his discoveries that could extend human life to age 125, but Amanda also suspects she was treated with the telomere elixir before the crash.
At the end of book one (Taming the Telomeres) Amanda learns she will soon welcome a baby brother named Justin, through a surrogate arranged by her dad.
In the Prologue, detailing a scene deep inside the book, Amanda is on a bullet train nearing Beijing. What daring plan has she embarked on? Why? Who is her compatriot assisting her, and how does she know how handle firearms? Answers sprinkle out in the ensuing opening chapters.

Book Excerpt

Targeting the Telomeres, A Thriller

Sleeper

What kind of scum-sucking cockroaches kidnap a defenseless baby, Amanda Michaels thinks while trying to fall asleep. She will make them regret that decision.

Lying on the cramped, lower bunk of the sleeper car, she feels with her fingertips along the thin foam-rubber pad masquerading as a mattress. There it is. She tugs on the lower portion of her backpack hiding the loaded pistol with the customized silencer, nestling what constitutes all her belongings in the crook of her right arm. The sheath strapped under the left pant leg of her jeans secures a long KA-Bar serrated edge fixed blade knife. And in the right pocket of her hoodie are two identical burner cell phones. One is her only means of communication with her compatriot, who is also on the train, both of them full-in with their improbable mission. Imagining the linen scent of her favorite candle briefly tricks her olfactory glands into ignoring the foul odors. The elderly Chinese lady on the bunk overhead smells of mildewing clothes. On the lower bunk an arm’s length away, a twenty-something Chinese girl sleeps with her jacket over her head. The sleeper car’s other occupant, a tiny woman who barely stands five-foot tall and can’t weigh 100 pounds, presses her torso against the tiny sink, paper towels surrounding the collar of her shirt, while she works some type of soapy liquid through her dark brown shoulder-length hair. Amanda decides to pass on that shower.

She thinks, all I wanted was to get some of my memory back from before the crash. Not this.

If she’s captured, what could Chinese intelligence agents possibly “get” out of her anyhow? Sure, she survived the Hemispheres plane crash, but she doesn’t know how or why. Only that it might have had something to do with her dad’s research and her being his test subject. To study her telomeres, maybe that’s what they would want? Most likely to torture her to learn whatever she knows.

Amanda thinks for a moment about a family photo. Of her dad, her, and her mom, sitting on the front porch of the house they lived in before the crash. The one she hopes to recall, that her Uncle Andy showed her. She mentally photoshops her baby brother Justin in too. Nothing can stop fantasies no one else can see.

The sink-showering lady climbs back up to her top bunk, and talks in Chinese with the other older lady.

If my plan fails, I won’t have to worry anymore, Amanda decides. Because I’ll be dead.